General Xu Junji could not make sense of what the Ning army was doing. They had a clear opportunity to pursue and annihilate a defeated enemy, yet they stayed on the south bank and pressed no further.

He had led his remaining cavalry — roughly twenty thousand strong — and arrived at his designated attack position right on schedule.

There was not a single Ning soldier to be found.

Midway back he ran into Dou Yong, who had come to meet him. Dou Yong was a man of brawn and little brain, so after hearing the account he was equally baffled as to why the Ning army would abandon a victory practically in hand.

When they rejoined the Chu forces north of the Panxing River, Xu Junji learned that the Ning army had set up no defenses at all.

He relayed everything to the Princess of Wu Wang, and she listened with a deepening furrow in her brow.

“They want to trap us north of the Panxing River?”

She murmured to herself: “But with only those twenty thousand or so cavalry, does Shen Shancoral really have the confidence to keep us pinned in the north with no way home?”

Even as she said it, the unease in her heart grew heavier.

Shen Shancoral’s command of troops was truly unfathomable — she gave the Princess of Wu Wang constant headaches. What the Princess did not yet know was that far to the north, Shen Shancoral had already laid out another formation, waiting for her.

“General,” Xu Junji asked, “the Ning cavalry had every advantage of a great victory — why did they not pursue?”

“How did you lose?” the Princess of Wu Wang shot back.

His column had been crossing the stone bridge when more than half were hit by the Ning surprise attack, leaving the head and tail unable to support each other.

That single counter-question made him realize: the Ning army feared a Chu counterattack. They too would have to cross that same bridge — what was to stop the Chu forces from turning and striking back while they crossed?

“That Ning cavalry will not return to the north bank,” the Princess of Wu Wang said. “Their mission is to patrol the south bank. They’re all mounted — fast, highly mobile. Wherever we try to ford back across, they’ll harass us. That is Shen Shancoral’s confidence.”

Shen Shancoral was certain that any Chu crossing would end in defeat — and even in defeat, she would not let them flee back.

She turned to Dou Yong. “Our plan does not change. No matter what, tonight we must reach Mangdang Mountain to relieve Wu Prince. Gods in our way, we cut down gods. Demons in our way, we slaughter demons!”

“Yes!”

Dou Yong answered and led the vanguard out once more. Most of the Chu army had already crossed the Panxing River; with the vanguard moving, the rest quickly fell into formation and followed.

Shortly after, Guo Songde’s column, which had crossed at the lower ford, arrived as well — they too had encountered no Ning forces.

About two hours later, on the Ning side, Shen Shancoral stood on high ground watching. She had been standing there a long while. When she saw dust rising to the south, she knew the Chu army was coming.

One of her generals, a man named Zhou Ye, said, “General, the Princess of Wu Wang is desperate to reach her husband — the column is moving fast.”

Shen Shancoral nodded. “She is a woman worthy of my admiration.”

In this world, there is no bond closer than husband and wife, and what the Princess of Wu Wang was doing was the fullest expression of that bond.

“If we were not on opposite sides,” Shen Shancoral said softly, “I would genuinely like to know her.”

She said no more and turned to survey her own forces.

A great number of trebuchets had been assembled in the rear and stood ready to fire at any moment.

There was no natural terrain here to hold as a strongpoint, yet Shen Shancoral had her reasons for deploying here. She was coordinating with Tang Pidi’s plan to encircle Wu Prince.

The ground to the north sat higher. If Wu Prince’s forces broke out of the mountain, even in darkness the flames from a battle at this distance would be visible from the north — and those on the mountain would know that the Princess of Wu Wang’s relief column was almost at the foot of the mountain.

That would drive the Left Guard’s breakout with even fiercer momentum, giving Shen Shancoral’s gambit its real purpose: to serve as a lure.

What appeared to the Princess of Wu Wang as a reckless gamble was, in Shen Shancoral’s eyes, nothing of the sort.

Fighting with a river at her back versus fighting on this open plain — she actually preferred the latter, because it would yield more kills.

In her thinking: if she had held the Panxing River too tightly, leaving the Chu army with no hope of crossing, their morale would have collapsed. By pulling back and letting them see an opening, she made them throw every last ounce of strength into the charge. That too was part of the lure.

The Princess of Wu Wang had asked where Shen Shancoral’s confidence came from. This was where it came from.

Its first source was her own ability. Its second was the fighting power of the Ning army. Its third… was equipment.

Tang Pidi had allocated to her a large number of trebuchets, heavy bolt-throwers, and rapid-fire crossbow arrays. With such weaponry, she had all the backbone she needed.

“Report!”

A scout came galloping back from a distance and reined in before her. “General, the Chu army is fifteen li away. The vanguard flies the Dou banner, but the identity of the vanguard commander is unknown.”

Shen Shancoral nodded. “Recall all the scouts.”

She turned to Zhou Ye. “Go and tell Chang Zaichun in the rear — the enemy is nearly upon us. Have him watch for the signal from the high ground. When the signal rises, the trebuchets begin.”

Zhou Ye immediately sent a rider to the rear, then said to Shen Shancoral, “General, I’ll return to my place in the formation.”

Shen Shancoral nodded. “Go.”

Zhou Ye descended from the high ground and rejoined the ranks. The Ning defensive formation had long been set; they had only to wait for the Chu attack.

Shen Shancoral remained on the high ground, watching. When the Chu vanguard had closed to three or four li, she signaled for the flare to be lit.

The moment the signal went up, every trebuchet in the rear released simultaneously. Great arms swung forward and boulders spun upward into the sky.

“Watch out!”

Vanguard commander Dou Yong spotted the black specks appearing against the sky ahead and bellowed the warning.

Before the shout had even finished, the boulders came down.

*Boom.* Chu soldiers who had no time to dodge were crushed — several at once — and the earth was thrown up in churning waves. One warhorse was pinned beneath a stone, still screaming, still struggling, but to no avail.

Stone after stone fell. Chu soldiers ran forward with heads tilted back, tracking where each boulder would land.

“Three hundred zhang,” the lookout reported to Shen Shancoral.

She gave a quiet acknowledgment and waited a moment longer.

“Two hundred zhang.”

“Beat the drums.”

At her command the war drums thundered, and virtually every bolt-thrower on the Ning line released at once — a dense black cloud of heavy bolts flying level with the ground.

That cloud moved with terrifying speed. The Chu soldiers charging forward could dodge the falling stones, but they could not dodge these bolts cutting horizontally through the air.

One layer.

As the heavy bolts tore into the Chu formation, the foremost rank went down instantly, without exception.

Dou Yong’s warhorse was hit. Had his reflexes been any slower, the bolt that punched through his horse’s neck would have gone through him as well. He leapt clear and rolled to absorb the impact, while his horse collapsed with a wailing cry, legs kicking in stiff, shallow spasms.

Dou Yong reached out, grabbed his phoenix-beak blade, and roared as he charged toward the Ning line.

He had originally been a general in the Liang Prefecture army, where he had spent years overlooked and underutilized — supremely skilled in arms but low in rank. Had the Liang Prefecture army not been absorbed into the imperial forces, he might never have found his opportunity.

The battle in which the Tianming Army had rebelled in Da Xing City had been his true apex. During the period when General Jiang Qihai lay gravely wounded, he had been the de facto commander of the city’s forces, and Emperor Yang Jing had personally ennobled him as a marquis.

In that period, he had felt for the first time what it meant to be valued.

For his service in protecting the Emperor, the Son of Heaven had issued an edict: both he and Jiang Qihai could enter the court in full armor, enter the palace without surrendering their weapons, and ride horseback through the Shiyuan Palace.

Such genuine trust from the Emperor had made Dou Yong the Emperor’s most loyal servant.

Now, all he wanted was to not fail that trust — not even in death.

With a thunderous roar, Dou Yong sprinted forward.

His personal guards charged with him, shields raised to deflect the arrows.

The vast gap in arms and equipment meant the Chu forces paid a devastating price before they had even reached the Ning lines. Large numbers of infantry were cut down by the heavy bolt-throwers and rapid-fire crossbow arrays — the latter’s carnage, in particular, was enough to make the scalp crawl.

High on the ground, Shen Shancoral glanced at the sky.

The Chu army had force-marched fifty li; dusk was now falling, and full dark would come in less than half an hour.

Time is the most critical factor on a battlefield. A commander who neglects it will always suffer for it.

She glanced westward. The quiet confidence in her eyes surfaced — the sun had fully set, and darkness would deepen quickly now.

The light was already fading. This was the moment Shen Shancoral had been waiting for.

In the open ground before the Ning lines, she had ordered countless small pits dug — each no larger than a single shovel’s worth. But for men running at full sprint, those dense, scattered holes would cause terrible harm.

As the light faded, the front ranks of the charging enemy would stop being able to see clearly.

The Chu forces had paid enormous casualties pushing forward, and now — only now — had they finally entered the effective range of the Ning archers.

Dou Yong, mid-charge, suddenly caught his foot and went sprawling. Before he could shout a warning, Chu soldiers all around him tripped and fell, sending the charging formation into chaos.

When he looked up and saw the ground ahead was riddled with those small pits, his expression turned very grim.

The Chu soldiers had no choice but to slow down…

If anyone thought those countless pits were dug merely to trip people up, they were thinking too shallowly.

The real purpose of all those pits was to reduce the speed of the Chu charge.

The slower the Chu army moved, the greater the killing power of the Ning archers.

To put it simply: if every Ning archer could fire at most five arrows from the moment the Chu forces entered range, slowing them down might mean each archer could fire seven, eight, or even ten. Double the arrows, double the time — the blow to the Chu forces was multiplied accordingly.

And now it was dark. The Chu soldiers trying to pick their way around the pits would move even slower than in good daylight.

War…

Has always placed killing the enemy above all else.

The Ning archers released their arrows without pause — one arrow, then another, the motion mechanical, repeated again and again. With each repetition, more and more Chu soldiers fell.

At last, Dou Yong understood that breaching the Ning defensive line in a single charge was impossible, and he gave the order to fall back.

Of the more than twenty thousand Chu vanguard soldiers, nearly half were lost before they ever reached the Ning line. Over ten thousand now lay on the ground; the vast majority were dead. Those wounded had been carried back, but almost none of the injured were fit to fight on.

“Light all the torches,” Shen Shancoral ordered.

“We must let Wu Prince see that his relief column is not far away.”

—